In most of our theories, we rely on the assumption that Amadeus Gloom (aka Mooching Hobo aka the Dark Overlord) is the same person as the dark figure that Rylie sees in her dreams and who (seemingly) murder Prisma and her Colors friends.
But what if... it was not the case?
We do not know much about Amadeus’s past, besides the fact that he is an only child according to the printed version’s bonus chapter. We know he has a sketchy past, impressive shadow (and candy) powers, and that he was somehow part of what happened in the ruins. Since he’s called the dark overlord by the lemon kids, we all concluded that he and the shadowy figure from Rylie’s dream were the same person.
However, Yellow never finished her sentence, did she? Was she calling for Ama-deus? Or perhaps Ama-ryllis? We do not know! There’s still the theory that those two are one and the same, going by different names at different times.
But a more interesting possibility is that she was calling for Amaryllis, and that the actual Amadeus was the child she carried in her arms.
Unthinkable? Well let me change your mind!
Light and Dark
In most myths as well as popular thinking, Light and Dark are two sides of the same coin. One can not exist without the other, they depend on one another. They’re similar yet they’re opposed. This duality is often portrayed as Light and Dark being linked, with their embodiment being related to one another or having some kind of counterpart. From how much she’s glowing, to her white and gold attire, it’s kind of obvious that Prisma is the Light one. Alright, who is the Dark one if not Amadeus the Dark Overlord?
It’s Rylie.
Yeah you read that right.
Light and Dark are Linked. Prisma and Rylie are linked. They look like each other, but they’re two distinct individuals.
After all, Rylie has had many “dark” foreshadowing. She has (had) the look too! Black hair, eyes that appear either black or red, powerful and mysterious magic, and a dream that keeps going back to that one moment where the Shadow Figure does something to Prisma....
Not only that, but her dreams can only be from the “perspective” of the shadow Mancer. Prisma gets eeby deebied before the end and Yellow arrives late. No one is witness to the whole event, except the perpetrator.
The Motive(s)
With this theory, I’m also uncovering a motive for the dark figure. If Prisma and them are linked, possibly siblings or even twins, the motive can be jealousy, resentment even. Prisma was by all standards the golden child. Powerful, beloved, and offered to lead a country! She’s clad in golds and nice fabrics, while “Ama” is in rags and bandages. Kept in the shadows. It would feel unfair. What would you want then, to set things "right"?
It also adds a nice parallel of blood family feud (Prisma and "Ama") vs found family friendship (Rylie and Wallis + Harold) if they are related.
This also explains Why Yellow wants Rylie dead! She may look like Prisma, but she isn’t. She’s her “murderer”. Yellow wants revenge! Maybe she believes it will bring back Prisma? After all, she seems trapped in Rylie’s psyche.
Speaking of, why is Prisma so nice to Rylie if what I said is true? Well that’s easy: Rylie is not her past, she’s not that dark figure. She grew up like a normal kid, perhaps under Prisma’s watch, and she just wants to live her life. Like Purple isn’t Violet, Rylie isn’t that dark figure, even if they share characteristics.
What about Amadeus?
I’ve covered who the dark figure is, if not Amadeus. That’s great, but where does Amadeus fit in then? In Midnight, he seemed to recognise the place and he swore that it would “never happen again”.
It’s a popular belief that a murderer will come back to the scene of the crime, and that’s exactly what Amadeus does in this chapter. His demeanor in this whole scene can be read as someone wracked with guilt and regrets coming back to the place of their biggest mistake, BUT it can also be read as the victim coming back to where they lost everything. He looks sad, almost nostalgic, but he’s trembling. He’s afraid. This is a place of trauma for him, no matter how you read it.
Another point is that Petunia is in the know. I’m not one to judge relationships, but it would be a pretty big deal breaker for anyone to find out your hubbie has been involved in mass murder. And left your family because he was haunted by his past. Granted, Petunia is more wild than she appears, but I still think Amadeus would need a really really solid reason for why he did what he did.
Currently, we have no clue. No obvious motives. No signs that Prisma deserved her fate. Her recent appearance shows her as a lovely person and a concerned friend, not someone rotten from the inside that needed to be stopped for the greater good.
So, is it more believable that Amadeus is indeed akin to a serial murderer, or that he was one of the victims?
Finally, Amadeus is an only child. That’s mentioned despite barely being relevant, so I call Chekhov’s gun on that! Yellow had One child. The emphasis on the baby is strong, but we don’t know what its deal is. We don’t even know if it survived after that day. So, what if that baby was Amadeus? They even have matching skin color!
The Flaw
Finally, I would like to bring up the one thing that breaks this whole theory: Pi.
We learn from him that the hair and eye color of people with ecoversian lineage tend to be green. If Amadeus is really Yellow’s kid, then he would have at least been born with green hair and eyes. Petunia’s eyes are green. Both Harold and Wallis have blue eyes. My theory crumbles on that point because of PI.
TL;DR:
Instead of Amadeus being the one to off Prisma, it's someone else. Rylie takes after them and after Prisma. Amadeus has done nothing wrong, no murders, and is as much a victim as Prisma is, because he was Yellow's child. Yellow wants revenge, and she can get it by killing Rylie.
This is probably one of my most out there theory, but the idea is still fun! Tell me what you think!
(Cross sending this from the gloomverse comic page 42)
So I was rereading and saw people wondering about what the lemon guy was reporting about Harold being at 'risk' of something.
I think it has to do with how Wallis got upset and everything went haywire with the space theming and zero-gravity
Because the lemon guy says that after talking, the lowering of Harold's 'unease and guilt' means his risk is almost zero. That means his risk is tied to heightened and stressful emotions.
Like what Wallis felt when he thought Petunia's wand broke.
So I think Wallis hit that level of 'risk', and with that, Amadeus/Hobo got VERY worried about if it would happen to Harold too, so that's why he was checking in.
just thought it was worth sending in!
Pages for context:
(Page 11 of chapter 27 "Midnight", and page 24 of chapter 13 "The Vanishing Act")
Very likely! It seems magic is influenced by your emotional state if Wallis is anything to go by, and with the special situation of Harold's magic, it could have potentially disastrous effect! Also you can see the Lemon Kids being ""distracting"" when Harold is at a low point in this page too (page 13-14 of chapter 17 "The Waking World") 👀
Rylie getting magic was possibly one of the most awaited moments in the comic, and the way it happened was incredibly impactful. A hat, emerging from her shadow in a time of need, hidden so close yet so far from her reach. And her magic was the cherry on top of this terrible cake tragedy! Color-coded super abilities definitely makes her magic stand out, but when talking about it, there’s always this question:
What will Red do?
And until it’s answered in the comic (or not), we have a lot of room to explore!
But first, let’s go over
Magic Personalities
What is that, you ask? Why, it is conveniently explained in Purple’s “How Magic Work” bonus strip! But knock-off Purple here explains it decently too.
The magic that you get is dependent on your interests, your biggest one, unless you’re really into rule-breaking things like the human body or cats. The type of magic you got is then fixed forever, and you have to live with the consequences of being really into marbles at age 10. Not everyone of us fixate on something cool like space, WALLIS.
Going back to Rylie. What WAS Rylie’s biggest interest at the time? What we know about Rylie is that she likes black and edgy/rebellious fashion, but is also cursed with rainbow dreads. That’s a solid contender, since her magic is based on colors. Looking at her room, she likes skull motifs, ponies, anime, and plushies.
A bit less relevant to her magic, although it is very anime magic. And finally, when she was in the hat store, dreaming up of what her magic could be, it was the power to jump as high as building, a nice foreshadowing and a sign that she did want that!
But let’s look deeper.
Assistant’s biggest desire was to belong, and the Gloom filled it and made her feel like family.
She got her hat when they were all in danger of death.
She got her magic pleading for a way to save them.
And the magic answered.
So I think the conditions in which she got her hat possibly influenced her magic!
Blue and Yellow Magic
Before going over the possibilities for red magic, let’s see what common points we can find between the two revealed power ups.
The most obvious thing is that they are color themed, in case you hadn’t noticed, and correspond to the rainbow (blue - yellow - red) on her wand (which is where we get the red for her next magic). She starts by saying the color out loud, but later manages to switch without speaking.
Both of her powers manifest as clothes: a pair of boots and a pair of gloves, and give her superhuman abilities, like lifting giant rocks and jumping very high.
So now we have the blueprint of her future magic: themed after a color (most likely red), wearable as clothes on her body, and providing Rylie with superpowered abilities.
I want to add that it should also respect the three rules of magic, but it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it.
Telekinesis
Let’s start with something silly. Rylie has been shown a few times to be interested in ponies. She has an Unicron poster in her new room, and a twilight plushie in her old room.
Ponies are a longstanding interest of hers, and magic is based on interests! Most My Little Pony iterations have 3 main types of ponies: earth pony, pegasus, and unicorns.
Earth ponies are strong, and are shown to give stronger bucks/kicks than others. Rylie uses Yellow magic to punch people into the air.
Pegasus ponies can fly around and walk on clouds. Rylie uses Blue magic to jump around and almost fly (though the only time she sinks into a cloud is when she’s wearing her boots in her dream, but that’s the trauma).
Unicorn ponies are overpowered and can make incredibly complex spells, but the most commonly used one is telekinesis. In this theory, Red would allow Rylie to move objects from a distance (like Wallis can already do!), and the article of clothing could be anything, from a differently shaped wand she can point at stuff, to a headset with horns. Who knows!
Senses
Rylie’s magic has a running theme of splitting her wand into two parts: pair of gloves for her two hands and pair of boots for her- ah, nevermind that.
But do you know what else comes in two? Kidneys! Lungs! Ears! Eyes! I think I’m safe to discard the first two since they are inside, but eyes and ears make for good contenders. If Yellow gloves boost her strength, why not Red goggles that improve her eyesight? Perhaps a full headset to improve both hearing and seeing! That may not be as exciting as jumping around, but it is definitely useful in a situation where discretion matters (like Virga hunting the group down).
Wings
Something really interesting about the Yellow magic is that the hat STILL has a little wing as a decoration on it! It made sense for Blue since winged shoes have been a thing for thousands of years (Hermes’ winged sandals) and it grants her the power to almost “fly” when she jumps, but why keep the wing on her hat when she has punching gloves? Because it’s not any kind of punch. It’s an AIR-punch! That sends Cakegirl FLYING! Interesting!
Rylie does have a lot of connections to clouds and sky, for someone who takes after a Light-themed mancer, does she not? That’s why I argue that Red could be a pair of wings, either as a cape or fixed to her arms. While that could seem redundant with her jumping boots, it could also go well with it, allowing her to glide instead of falling immediately back down. That would be a useful mid-air shift, or a good way to not die when plummeting towards the ocean from a height that transforms water surface into deadly concrete, as a random example.
Freeze
Finally, my main theory. There is another theme that I noticed between Yellow and Blue magic: Fight or Flight response. Yellow is Fight, Blue is Flight. It’s the possible reaction to a threat: you either run away and escape the threat, or you attack the threat and dispose of it. Rylie got her magic during a very active threat to her wellbeing and her friends’, and she pleaded for a way to save them. Magic answered by enhancing her ability to flee and to fight!
But there is a third (and fourth) response to a threat: freezing behavior, to become rigid and petrified in place. Red would be the magic’s “freezing” response, and allow Rylie to block a direct attack, through a shield or armor, and overall make her be able to tank and sustain damage. While not as showy as the other two colors, and definitely harder to turn into an asset for her own magic show, the theme of the three stress responses makes me really like this option.
The fourth response is fawning, but it is not as easy to translate into a magic power up as freeze.
Something else
I’m no wizard, and the future is as clouded to me as it is to you. Red magic could be either or none of these options. Perhaps it enhances something else, like her speed, or gives her more ranged powers, like a whip or a bow, perhaps it’s dual swords because it would be cool! Maybe it will come up in a moment where Rylie experiments with her magic while everything is calm, or maybe it will be something that helps Rylie in a dire moment, summoned from instinct. Who knows! But it is fun to speculate, and I hope you had fun too.
There is however one last possibility.
We will never know what Red magic does, if Rylie never tries it.
After all this time, all those nightmares, the color Red may not be the most enticing color to try with magic. Something about an evil magician with red eyes and a red wand.
Why try RED, when there’s so many other colors to try from? Perhaps Green will be a combination of Blue and Yellow, or an entirely new ability! The Green lady seemed so much nicer than the Red figure obliterating her.
So those were my thoughts on Rylie’s magic!
TL;DR
Magic is based on personal interest
Rylie got hers in a moment of trauma
Her magic consist of ability-enhancing color-coded accessories
Possible options for red magic power-up:
Telekinesis as a nod to Rylie’s brony phase
Enhanced vision/hearing to pair with her other enhanced abilities
Wings because of the air-theme and little wing decorations
A shield/armor as a freezing response to go with the current two’s fight or flight theme
Something else
We will never find out because of Rylie’s trauma with red tinted magic
How Cirrus’ childish behaviour is symptomatic of the problems in stratoversian society
Stratoverse is a foreign country with a culture still clouded in mystery, but we were given snippets into its inner working thanks to Indigo, Virga, Nim and Cirrus. So far, all of the stratoversian with screentime displayed various levels of immaturity, more or less subtly. Before I can dive into those, let’s define something.
What is Maturity?
“Maturity” is a buzzword that gets thrown around, but people would be hard pressed to give it a clear definition. How do you define maturity? It’s the state of being mature, says one dictionary, proving its uselessness. Maturity is being an adult, but Cirrus insisting that “he is an adult so you can’t make him do anything” is ironically a big sign of immaturity.
Being mature is a list of behaviours, such as:
Managing your own emotions
Recognizing other people’s emotions
Taking responsibility for your actions
Establishing your boundaries and respecting other’s
Being able to apologise
Being able to handle failure, rejection, or being wrong
Being open-minded
Maturity is not only a virtue, but also a skill. It’s one that is expected out of adults and even older teens, but no one is perfect, no one is mature at all times. Being mature is hard work, being responsible is difficult, admitting you were wrong can seem impossible, but it’s still something everyone needs to strive to in order to live in society. It becomes a problem if the moments of immaturity outweigh the moments of maturity. It becomes an even bigger problem when you give someone like that power.
The thing about power is that you can ignore your responsibilities if you have enough (sorry Uncle Ben), and Stratoversian society is built on power.
Let’s take a look at Cirrus, as he is the prime example of an immature Stratoversian
Cirrus’ immaturity
Our first impression of Cirrus is that of a stuck-up jerk who belittles people for something as trivial as wearing shoes. Our second impression of Cirrus is that of a man-child giving himself a headache after throwing the aforementioned tantrum. It is not a brilliant introduction, he is made to be unlikeable, so unlikeable that even the one character he interacts with is glad to see him gone.
From the get-go, he demonstrates that
1. He is not able to manage his emotions and even hurts himself with how he expresses them
2. He does not recognize he was wrong for getting angry or apologises, instead he “ignores” her “disgrace” for a moment
3. He does not respect the president’s order to stay out of Gloomverse, showing that he does not care for the consequences of his actions and does not take responsibility for them
4. He is very close minded of anything outside of Stratoversian norms
And that’s just from his first appearance! Without even mentioning his catastrophic rapport to Nim!
In his second appearance, Purple aptly remarks that Cirrus “act like a five year old”, and he is right.
Cirrus insists on coming with Nim to Wallis’ show, claiming interest in the culture. He promised to behave, but forced Nim in a position where she had to accept his demand or risk having him show up without being supervised. Fast-forward to the time of the show, and all of his previous claims fall through. He is still belittling the culture and Nim needs to remind him of the very real consequences for Her in order to get him to settle down. The show starts, Seaweed shows up, and Cirrus gets a teenager crush, and proves once again what little handle he has on his emotions. Cakegirl arrives, and Cirrus does his good action of the day by saving Harold from a fall to the death.
When the world conference rolls around, Cirrus spent three weeks in jail, and it did not teach him anything. He finally crosses the line with Nim and gets an overdue call out on his behaviour. She establishes some very clear boundaries here. She’s tired of babysitting him! Unfortunately, this does not stick, because Cirrus follows her back to the ruins. He literally has no valid reason for doing this. What’s more, we have yet to hear a single apology from this guy.
Then, the Beach Episode comes. Cirrus does not miss the opportunity to show off his wonderful temper. But we get a little more this time, we get a crack. For the first time, he manages to keep a straight face as he recites a law of Stratoverse. This happens once again in A Day on the Town when cirrus talks about his fathers’ ranch. You can tell it’s a sore topic because he remains emotionless. After all his exuberant display of outrage, this is the one topic where he doesn’t allow himself to feel anything.
And we will unpack that later!
Indigo as a parallel
Indigo doesn’t get revealed as Stratoversian right away. He’s a working DJ, he’s the president’s personal hitman, he’s a delusional playboy… He is a lot of things, depending on what he needs! Overall, Indigo is selfish. He does not care what others are going through, or the consequences of his actions on them as long as he comes out unscathed.
Contrarily to Cirrus, Indigo has his emotions in check. He does not care about what other people do if it doesn’t affect him, while Cirrus gets introduced by yelling at Nim for touching the ground. Indigo is smiling most times and even if he is an “open book”, his emotions are not the burden of others. That is, unless you press a sensitive point, like his sense of self. On the other hand, Cirrus’ temper is something everyone else has to deal with and tip toe around. The only time when he can keep it together is when it’s something he’s sensitive about.
Where Cirrus shuts down, Indigo flares up, and so they make for interesting parallels.
Indigo’s immaturity is different from Cirrus, because they had different lives, but the root of the problem is once again Stratoverse. Thanks to Indigo, we got context for Stratoversian childhood and expectations. And it’s pretty terrible.
Let’s talk about it!
Cirrus’ childhood
Stratoverse has some kind of incentive to make every citizen gain weather magic. The reason why is still a mystery and worthy of plenty of theories, but it is not today’s focus.
Indigo explains pretty well how this happens. Children are separated from their families, given to caretakers and taught about the weather cycle. Nim mentions that she got “floated” a lot as a kid, so it’s not a full no-contact situation - at least not for everyone - but it’s still rather isolating. Indigo tells us that he “wanted to live in the sky with [his] parents”, and so did most other kids.
Cirrus is an exception though, because his fathers live on the mainland in a ranch. They do not have magic and they can’t live in the cloud city. There’s no one waiting for Cirrus in the clouds. When other children finally regroup with their family upon getting magic, Cirrus would be leaving his behind forever. As he loves to remind people, it’s shameful to touch the ground. He still holds them dear in his heart, as shown when he punched the president for badmouthing magicless people, or when he almost cracked after Rylie’s question. Nevertheless, it still got ingrained in him that he should be ashamed of his origins, from how meek he was when talking about his dads’ ranch. Stratoversian propaganda is very effective if it can convince a country kid that a leaf is actually disgusting and touching the ground a disgrace.
Cirrus is powerful, he probably got magic early on. Let’s say 12 years old. From that age on, he grew up with no parents, no guardians, no caretakers. It’s during teenage years that people learn to be mature, to manage their emotions, to handle conflict and to respect others. They can either learn it in school, from teachers or peers, or from their family. Cirrus had neither. He can’t go to his family and he doesn’t have any friends if his attachment to Nim is anything to go by.
Speaking of, let’s focus on Nim and Cirrus for a little bit now.
Cirrus’ attachment to Nim
Cirrus and Nim are both grown adult, and they’re both royalties. They’re not siblings however, and don’t know much about each other. For all due purposes, they are colleagues. Cirrus seems to have some years of anteriority over Nim, but other than that they’re equals. They have no need to interact, and Nim would even prefer if they didn’t. Despite that, Cirrus clings to her with force. We know from Virga that the trip back and forth to Gloomverse takes a full day. Cirrus come visit her multiple times, and his first visit (that we know of) lasted less than an hour. He clearly doesn’t approve of what Nim is doing, but that doesn’t stop him from checking up on her.
Why?
Because he is a fucking desperate for a human connection, except he has no clue how to go about it, so he clings to the only proper relationship he has in his life: his royal colleague!
He can’t turn to Virga because she’s already proven herself to be unsafe by punching him and making fun of his ideas, and he can’t be around the king because everyone expects him to dethrone (and kill) him, so Nim is the only one he has left. She’s also polite and nice enough to tolerate him, and he takes it as the greenlight to be even more clingy. He’s unconsciously forcing her to mom him, and she has to be responsible for the two of them.
Nim is stuck trying to appease him and maintain a cordial relationship because her own situation is unprecedented and precarious, and there’s a high chance he could jeopardize her passports and permits if she actually spoke her mind! At the world conference, she finally speak up because she literally has nothing to lose. She spent three weeks in jail because of her association with Cirrus, and her passports and permits to study have been thrown out the window. So when he belittles her and her interests, she snaps, because she can.
Their relationship is not a balanced one, but it’s progressively becoming better. Now that nothing is at stakes, she can be honest and actually tell him off, which she does!
Royal Responsibilities
You may have already read a few pieces about it (like this rant), but the prince and princess titles doesn’t seem to come with a lot of responsibilities. It seems that only the king and queen can make any meaningful decisions, and the prince and princess’ role is to support those decisions.
Cirrus is interested in making life better for the magicless. He has family at stake even. Yet he is shown running away from any responsibilities he might have in Stratoverse to follow Nim, and aggravating the tense relationship between Gloomverse and Stratoverse by punching the president. It’s not really his fault though, because that’s the way Stratoverse’s society is built: the most powerful have the most power, and the ones with power can do what they want because they’re powerful. You don’t agree with a political decision? Duke it out with the politician. Someone made a mistake? Punch them to teach them a lesson. That’s what he learned, that’s what he does.
And what he does is selfish and immature, because that’s what the system thrives on. People are encouraged to remain immature, to act on instinct, to punch the people they don’t like, to be selfish and not think of others. The system relies on Stratoversian being too busy fighting to survive, too selfish and immature to give a damn what others are going through. It keeps people from organizing and rebelling. It keeps the system going.
Summary
This went in a different direction than what I thought it would. Here’s a summary:
Stratoversians, especially Cirrus, have been regularly characterised by their immaturity – especially when it comes to handling their emotions. They resort to show of force, they establish dominance with their magic, their bodies, their voice. Even Indigo resort to it when pushed to the brink. The way children are raised in Stratoverse often leads to immature adults because of a lack of appropriate education and doing the equivalent of giving a teenager a gun. Stratoverse culture is one of power, where rationality is dismissed in favour of strength. This keep people from trying to change the system: the people in power benefits from it, and if someone were to try and change things, a punch in the face will put a stop to it.
Cirrus is a product of that society: immature, impulsive, careless, and full of prejudice. So were Nim and Indigo, and they’re all on a journey to unlearn those things, albeit at different speeds.
So what do we know about Indigo's life? Well actually quite a lot! Thanks to Ylil, we got to learn a lot about this guy's life.
Firstly, Indigo is definitely over 18, I think we can all agree the manchild is indeed an adult. I'm not going to need proof to convince you all of that fact, hopefully.
Indigo spent his childhood in Stratoverse, specifically on the land of awareness. There, he was taught all about clouds and weather, until he eventually got magic.
He left right after getting magic, or at least it's implied that he did, as turning Indigo drove him over the edge and really affected his self worth, possibly due to increased bullying. He even says it outright that being Indigo was a reason for "being laughed out of [his] own country"
So he left after getting magic! Which should be around 12 years old, probably ranging from 10 to 15. Stratoversian being more powerful in general, and Indigo not being shown as weaker than average, we can deduce that he got his magic at around that age, and not later. He may just have left without magic and died at sea if he hadn't got his magic at the same time as his peers.
Alright, that's great and all, but for now all I've established is that Indigo left Stratoverse as a young teen and is now older than 18 in gloomverse. How is that theorizing about his age?? Is what you may ask.
Worry not, dear reader, for I have just the thing:
Queen Virga of Stratoverse, current strongest magician in the world.
How does she relate to Indigo you ask? Well...
Indigo doesn't recognize her.
That's pretty telling actually. And given Indigo's track record, it seems improbable that he is feinging ignorance to seems inconspicuous. Possible, but not probable. So the rest of that theory lays on Indigo being too dumb to pretend to be dumb.
Anyway
Why is it important that Indigo doesn't recognize her? Well as a stratoversian, Indigo was given classes about Stratoverse and weather. Since the country relies on brainwashing the kids to love their country and clouds, knowing WHO the (current) queen is and what she looks like sounds important. I know Indigo right now isn't a model student, but in the past he just might have been! He tried hard to belong, and the stuff you learn as a kid isn't so easily washed away.
Hence this: Virga wasn't the queen at the time that Indigo lived in Stratoverse.
That's cool and all, but now we have the same problem as with Indigo: How old is Virga???
Well, she's actually easier to figure out.
I'm going to assume Stratoverse/Yellow is reasonable enough not to let children be in charge, and that a person needs to be 18 or older to fight for the royalty's titles.
I mean, the last time they did, bad things happened...
Prisma was considered to all, as a respectable, and beautiful magician, and she took the job at a surprisingly young age. The exact age is unknown, except that she was 'nearly an adult' when she came into power.
So, Virga is older than 18. yay
But she has been in office for quite some time now! At the very least three years if the world leaders' meeting is every year. More if it's espaced of two, three, etc, years. Since the conference takes a couple of weeks, it would make sense if it wasn't yearly.
Cirrus, having no reason to be present unless it's a former meeting, punched prez during a conference. Virga mentions it was forever ago, which could be just smack talk, or hint that it wasn't even during the last conference. Nim is a "better choice than the last", so she wasn't there at the previous conference, and the last princess was 'chosen' by Virga, aka came into the position while Virga was already queen.
She's at least 21 if the conference is every year and she became queen at 18. That's the lowest age possible for her.
But Virga has very strong mommy energy, as seen here:
I'm not saying those children are her own, but she definitely watched them grow up, so we can add a +10 years to her counter. 28 years old as a bare minimum.
Alright! It's safe to say Virga is at least 28 years old, in the best case scenario. In a more realistic one, she would have took the princess title at 20 and the queen title a bit later, she seems to be quite experienced too, so let's say she's in her middle-end thirties.
However there's a very important piece of information I haven't considered yet...
Stratoversian can live older than average, and look fresh even in old age (just look at the king who's supposedly at least 80 years old!!). So despite looking rather young, Virga could actually be in her 60s and we would have no idea.
Back to Indigo! Comparing him to Virga leaves us a couple options!
Indigo is the same age as Virga
I'll consider "same age" with a 2 years margin.
While it adds Angst to think Virga was one of his bullies, I think it's more likely that they never met each other. Stratoverse is still a big country, it's unlikely everyone knows everyone (Nim and Cirrus didn't know each other as children for example). Being the same age as Virga, Indigo's age is ranging from 26 to 40.
Indigo is older than Virga
Oh man, he's old in that case... Older than 30 at the VERY LEAST! Because Virga being 28 is the best possible scenario.
Indigo is younger than Virga
This one is actually very interesting... Because it means Virga wasn't queen when Indigo was still in stratoverse. If she took the throne at 18 and Indigo left at 12.... Then their age gap can only be 6 years. Otherwise, Virga would be queen before Indigo leaves. Of course, the later Virga takes the throne, the larger the age gap can be. Taking the throne at 24 means Indigo can be 12 years younger, and so and so....
So in this scenario, Indigo's age remain unclear.... Yet this is the most likely scenario.
It really all depends on Virga's age tho... The best guess for her age being late thirties, I think it's safe to assume — after everything I've presented you — that Indigo himself is in his early thirties.
TL;DR: Indigo is at least 30 yo and this post has been in my drafts for almost 2 years now.
Back in Revelations, Purple introduced us to the idea of 5 Magicians who were able to disregard the known Rights of Magic, or use loopholes specific to themselves to do so.
Here’s the mural we got of them in that very chapter:
It so happens that Purple introduces us to four of them in his book, so we are here to bring the information we have. Here’s what we’ve been able to deduce about them, both from the book and the webcomic.
Disclaimer: All titles are for fun unless mentioned in the story.
Going in chronological order, we have Amaryllis.
The First Mancer. The Goddess of Stratoverse. Freer of Humankind.
The first Mancer to be mentioned by name in-story (Cirrus in The Beach Episode Without Beach) and called the “Sun” or a Goddess, perhaps you have wondered what kind of Goddess she could be, and what she might have done to earn this title.
In the time before humans set out and settled the world (about 2000 years before the present), a Storm confined humanity into caves on a small island. When the Storm weakened, those communities could trade, but nobody ever got farther than half a day away, because the respite was so short.
Until her. As a child she discovered the power of Magic and cleared the Storm with raw power. Her name? Amaryllis. And the Isle carrying her name, now a holy land, is said to be where much of humanity was confined in its earliest days. Her current whereabouts are unknown and according to Hyacy Tradition, her “Element” is the Sky. There are four more: Light, Darkness, Seed, and Water. We’ll come back to them.
Now back to Amaryllis.
In the stained glass we see in Revelations, we see a child in a yellow dress holding her hands towards the sky and seemingly catching a lightning strike in them: this is Amaryllis. She is seen as a Goddess in Stratoverse, associated with the Sun, and with the color yellow.
Yellow is the color of royalty for Stratoverse. Additional bonus fact: Amarillo/Amarilla is Spanish for yellow.
From Amaryllis Isle, humankind spread all over Ecoverse where they would begin to discover more and more of Magic and build a society for the next 500 years. Which is when the next two Mancers come in. But before we get to explain “Hyacy”, we have to talk about the second Mancer: Malus. Breaker of Chains.
By the time Malus appeared, most of the magicless people had been forced into some form of slave labor for about 200 years, with their magic Masters keeping hats and wands as a closely guarded secret.
Born a slave to magicless parents, Malus gained her Magic on her 13th birthday, apparently without a hat. Malus’ strong magical ability let her set out to end their reign in an angry, bloody revolution.
Her magic is directly linked to another Element of the Hyacy Tradition, Water. We see her figure at the bottom of the glass mosaic, surrounded by waves and bearing five blue jewels on her forehead. Her expression is quite fierce and her gesture of “parting waves” aggressive thanks to it.
It is unknown whether she has a link to the Mermaid, but if any Mancer made her, it’s most likely Malus.
This two year long revolution was ended by a girl born into a high ranking Magic household who was only sixteen when the revolution began. Her name was Hyacinth and she soon rose to become the leader of the people that survived the revolution, preaching peace to them with great charisma. Unlike Malus, who wasn’t a politician and disappeared as soon as the revolution was over, she remained a part of society the following years, and largely contributed to rebuilding Ecoverse after the civil war killed off about half of the population.
Now... there is no historical or even narrative evidence that Hyacinth has magic. So why do we suspect her to be a Mancer? Well...
Hyacinth and her followers built a religion/belief system, Hyacy, that reposed on five Elements: Light, Sky, Seed/Soil, Water and Darkness. If you were attentive, you have already seen the motif representing all five within the comic.
It appears that each Mancer corresponds to an element. The others are more obvious than Hyacinth, but if you go by elimination you can figure out she should be the Seed mancer.
There are very few surviving records of Hyacinth’s magic (if at all), but according to the belief of her most Traditionalist followers, humans were most closely aligned with the Seed Attribute. The ease at which she unified the survivors, even the rarity of revolts against a former Master taking control, point towards her having mind affecting abilities of the Seed Attribute. Malus, despite no other magician being able to do more than slow her down, also implied that Hyacinth was stronger than herself, to the extent of refusing to fight her.
Purple’s summary of Mancer abilities supports this. He mentions that they can affect the human mind, though no direct mention of it is made in his book. As the one who would have the same element humans supposedly belong to, Seed, and more specifically humans with plants on their heads, if any character has mind control, it is most likely her.
She is the woman in the green dress and three green gems in our picture of all five. She has a peaceful expression, emphasizing her role of bringing peace to the revolution.
Furthermore, if you asked an Ecoversian living today, they would reply that both Hyacinth and Malus are still alive today, 1500 years later, but their whereabouts are unknown. We even see them in Rylie’s dream behind Yellow, which happens 500 years after the revolution. Their hair is different from the mural, but they are there as evidenced by the gems they wear and their locations.
Hyacinth
And Malus
Alright, three done, two mancers to go. Let’s tie over the historical events first, however.
200 years after Malus and Hyacinth, religious dissent broke out. Traditionalists claimed humans only belonged to the Seed element, and that Malus’ rampage had been caused by her being so interested in Water; Revisionists argued that restraining humans to the Seed element and devaluing the achievements of those of other Elements was not the way to go. Their biggest argument? Amaryllis, they insisted, had Weather (Sky) Magic and was obviously very important to human history. These Revisionists were given the newly discovered Stratoverse to avoid a civil war, and settled there. Much like Gloomverse, their Magic took various forms until a mysterious event dubbed “The Return” a hundred years later. Of who, or what, we do not know. But that event seems to have changed Stratoverse forever, and caused them to only seek Weather magic.
1000 years after Amaryllis drove back the Storm and 1000 years prior to the current story, Stratoverse and Ecoverse began to clash once again. This time, it was on a new landmass that would become known as Gloomverse.
As Gloomversians apparently didn’t write down the events of their founding, the only surviving records come from two sources in Stratoverse and Ecoverse, mostly the correspondence between their then-leaders Narcissus and Queen Asperitas. They decided to have Gloomverse become the land that would unite them once more, and rather than fight over the new continent, they decided to accept arrivals from both countries.
From these records, we learn of Asperitas sending in a very gifted Magician to keep the peace and manage the many arrivals. In the glass mural, she is the central figure, a hand holding up the Sun. Almost an adult when she first reached Gloomverse, she went by the name of Prisma.
Prisma managed to do this very well for a few years and one of the first settlements is now called City of the Ancients. This place has been abandoned after a certain unrecorded event (most likely Prisma’s murder) and has become Nim and Purple’s place of study.
Prisma is seen glowing and speaking with grey text right before she is murdered. She also carries a Sun-shaped scepter (her wand?). She also is implied to have been the creator and/or master of the Colors. She is the Light Mancer, and is also the one we have seen in the recent “Less than human” chapter talking with Rylie.
Though we know a little about her life, her abilities are largely unknown. She shares the gem placement with Malus, but hers are yellow (the color of light/the sun/Stratoverse royalty) and there are also three of them.
We still have one figure on the mural to talk about:
This hidden one, who by elimination is the Darkness mancer. They are hiding behind Prisma in the purple mass perhaps representing the Storm, looking through to the side next to Amaryllis and holding something resembling a mask. Interestingly, their body is mostly hidden as well...
This is our prime suspect for the aforementioned Prisma Murder. The figure shrouded in Darkness with red eyes, carrying a black wand and covered in rags.
Mooching “I can’t let this happen again” Hobo, the Dark Overlord, Amadeus. Husband of Petunia and father of Harold and the famous Wallis Gloom. I could go deep into detail about him right here and now, but as he is not mentioned in Purple’s book and apparently not a known part of history, I will keep this for a different post.
In any case it’s pretty clear he is the same person, just... a thousand years later. We already know Hyacinth and Malus are likely to still be alive after 1500 years after all.
So there you have it.
Five elements, five Mancers:
- Amaryllis of the Sky
- Malus of Water
- Hyacinth of Seed/Soil
- Prisma of Light
- Amadeus of Darkness
Any further theory or linking to other characters would be pure speculation, so we’ll cut it here. Thank you for your time!
It seems all the mancers except for Amadeus had green hair, is there any significance to that?
I don't know if it's really significant, but there is an explanation!
TL;DR: The Mancers are all Ecoversians or of Ecoversian descent and have green/plant hair. Meanwhile, Amadeus is being edgy and dyed his natural hair color.
Until the year 700 (date of Stratoverse’s creation), all of humanity lived in Ecoverse, and everyone presumably had plant hair. It was at least common enough that these magicians were both depicted with it.
Side note: it’s likely that plant hair existed before the discovery of magic and helped humans survive in caves when the Storm was still raging outside.
The first three Mancers, Amaryllis, Malus and Hyacinth, were/are ecoversians and presumably had/have plant hair. Since most plants have green leaves, their hair are green!
For example, I would headcanon that Malus has a willow tree for plant hair.
(It look similar and it add symbolism to the dream since there are Hyacinths around already!)
Prisma was from Stratoverse, not Ecoverse, and she clearly has hair and not leaves. But Pi already explained this to us: the green color is hereditary for first generation kids.
The split between Stratoverse and Ecoverse happened in year ~700, and Prisma was alive around year 1000. Three centuries is a lot of time, that’s almost 10 generations. But with a small gene pool and possibly ecoversian immigration, the green hair could have easily stuck around in Stratoverse long enough for Prisma to have it. That’s four.
Side note: if all Ecoversians have plant hair and no actual hair, then one can wonder why there was a sudden change from Ecoverse to Stratoverse. The harsher and colder climate as well as the life on the sea (early Stratoversians were mostly fishermen) might have killed the plants, and allowed hair to grow.
Other side note: Rylie’s middle name is Greenwitch, and so far all mancers (or witches) had green hair. Her being named Greenwitch is not innocuous, it links her back to Prisma and could eventually hints that she’s also a mancer.
What about Amadeus? In the nightmare, the dark figure (that is presumably Amadeus the Dark Overlord) has black hair, but they are shrouded in Dark magic, just like Prisma is shrouded in Light magic which altered her color scheme (her hair looks lime/yellow when it is actually a deep green). So maybe the same happened to them and darkened their hair!
Amadeus can change his hair from Red to Black and back to Red, as well as change the color of all of his clothes. He’s even theorized to be a shapeshifter!
If he can do that, the he could also have changed it from Green to Black to Red!
Side note: In the stained glass depiction of the mancer, the fifth one in the back has purple hair, but black glass would be too opaque for a window glass so purple was probably used instead.
Additionally, we don’t know how long he’s been alive, or where he was born. He might’ve been born in Stratoverse like Prisma, or maybe he was born in Gloomverse! He could also have been alive for longer than the other four mancers for all we know, so we can’t really deduce his natural hair color from his early life’s context.
